Netflix Missed Another Opportunity With ‘KPop Demon Hunters’

It must have come as some surprise to Netflix Inc. when its KPop Demon Hunters Sing-Along was the weekend’s top moneymaker in movie theaters. As recently as April, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos insisted that filmmakers making movies “for movie theaters, for the communal experience” is “an outmoded idea.”

But the company defied its usual anti-theatrical stance to present the singalong version of the film at those outmoded movie theaters, making it a limited event at 2,180 venues around the world. Unlike conventional studios, the company doesn’t report its box office earnings, but it claimed over 1,300 of those screenings sold out, and experts are estimating its $18-$20 million in ticket sales would put it on top for the weekend. Keep in mind, this is the sing-along version of a movie viewers have been able to watch on Netflix at home, as often as they want, since June. But that audience chose to leave those precious living rooms and experience the picture in a theatrical setting.

So, what is a company to do when its performance in the marketplace disproves its CEO’s own assertions? Netflix decided to respond to the robust returns of the KPop Demon Hunters Sing-Along not by taking the public temperature and extending its theatrical run to a second weekend or beyond, but by promptly announcing its arrival on the service the very next day. (It’s there now.) It’s as if the streamer’s executives saw how much theycould make with a theatrical release, and had to put a stop to that immediately, cutting off their nose to spite their collective face. Tortured logic is necessary to frame this as a business decision rather than a philosophical one, because Netflix is demonstrably leaving money on the table.